New Orleans man notorious for lying to the media says he told the truth about traffic camera tickets

Ryan Holiday has achieved his 15 minutes of fame by lying to journalists. While that might seem like a dubious distinction, Holiday has orchestrated every ounce of "bad" publicity as part of a game plan to expose the media's vulnerabilities -- and publicize his new book, which was released Thursday. According to Forbes magazine, Holiday's recent escapades have ranged from posing as a vinyl records collector in The New York Times to fabricating a story for MSNBC about someone sneezing on him when he worked at Burger King.

Nor has New Orleans, Holiday's adopted home, been exempt from his puppeteering. He is featured in a Jan. 15 Times-Picayune story, grousing about at least $1,000 in speeding tickets he and his girlfriend received from traffic cameras in the Garden District.

Holiday admits to planting untruths in the national media, saying "the ends justified the means." But he claims he contacted Times-Picayune City Editor Gordon Russell because he was genuinely outraged about the well-concealed traffic camera Jackson Avenue and Chestnut Street. In that instance, he asserts, everything he said was true.

"The thing was unjust, it was messed up," Holiday said of the traffic cameras in a phone interview from New York, where he is promoting his book. "I wasn't going to sit around waiting for someone to do something about it. It wasn't going to make the news otherwise."

Holiday is marketing director for American Apparel -- a fact confirmed by the clothing company's founder and CEO, Dov Charney, who calls the 25-year-old a "genius" at gaining the upper hand with bloggers and journalists.

Indeed, Holiday has timed his burst of notoriety perfectly with the release of his book, "Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator." In the past few days, his name has been featured on the websites of two high-prestige outlets: Forbes and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Was it a coincidence that Forbes outed his lies on the eve of his book release? Hardly, Holiday claims. Rather, he used the magazine to his advantage by "giving" the story to Forbes -- that is, if he is to be believed.

The lies are over for now, he says. After all, if his sole aim were deception, wouldn't he stay incognito rather than putting "a huge target on my back" by writing a book?

By his telling, the book is in part an act of generosity, motivated by his desire to transmit his marketing secrets to others. He hopes to teach people who have worthwhile products to sell -- whether garment-dyed T-shirts or books of media criticism -- how easy it is to inflame the media horde, particularly in an age of nonstop blogging and tweeting.

"If I could fool everyone from ABC News to The New York Times as a joke, what if someone with millions of dollars, or people with political agendas, what if their intentions were way worse than mine?" Holiday said.

Not only does Holiday use the media, he has thoughts about what makes it tick. His essay "Our Gullible Press," published on the website of the Columbia Journalism Review on the day his book came out, describes the pressures on modern-day journalists to churn out blog posts and sensationalize headlines. He compares the internet age to the "yellow journalism" of the 1800s.

That puts his philosophy surprisingly in line with that of many serious journalists who value quality over quantity and wish they had more time to double-check information.

But Kelly McBride, senior faculty for ethics at the Poynter Institute, isn't buying Holiday's positioning as a media reformer. His tactics, which included the use of a website called "Help a Reporter Out" to offer himself as a source, were "intended to humiliate."

"That, I think, is really mean," McBride said.

The reporters who were tricked by Holiday were not especially careless, according to McBride. In journalism, as in life, there is a presumption that someone is not telling an absolute whopper. Special vetting is called for only in certain instances -- for example, if the source is criticizing someone else or has an obvious ulterior motive.

Russell, with the Times-Picayune, agrees. He says he had no reason to disbelieve Holiday because the account squared with those given by others who had also received multiple tickets, and because the mayor's office did not deny the problem.

Meanwhile, Holiday is enjoying New Orleans, where he lives with his girlfriend, Samantha Hoover, and their dachshund Hanno, in a former convent in the Garden District.

Holiday's status as a boy wonder of the marketing world may be enhanced by his sudden fame. But what happens the next time he rings up a journalist is another story.

"I'd sure as heck not be quoting him on anything, ever," McBride said.